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Tracking the Failure

Above is a chart that tracks the rise and fall of the biggest percentage spending over a 100 year period. Notice the rise and fall of defense spending. Look at the decline of spending known as “other” which was mostly for the US post office and Natural Resources. Most importantly as the demand for pensions and health care rose, so did the national debt which is indicated in today’s dollars

The red/blue line above represents who controlled congress over this 100 year period. Also In today’s dollars the National debt of that year is to the right of that year.

What are some of the causes of the $13 trillion national debt?

Must be all those wars? If there was no War in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, S. Korea-Today’s national debt of $13.7 would be still a whopping $11.48 trillion. In other words a sliver of the problem would be shaved off.

What about those Bush Tax Cuts?

I was able to find one article that seemed non-biased.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/26314.html “How much Did the Bush Tax Cuts Cost Us?”

“When the Kennedy tax cut dropped the top income tax rate from 91% to 70%, or when the Reagan tax cut dropped it from 70% to 50%, it is quite possible that the lower rates raised more revenue than the old, higher rates would have. On the other hand, few if any of today's tax rates are so high that cutting them would generate a surge of income-producing activity so large that revenue would rise”

But then it goes on to say : “The only place we could find a recent hindsight estimate of the cost of the Bush tax cuts came from the liberal Citizens for Tax Justice who used it as an opportunity to compare the Bush tax cuts' cost to health care reform. According to CTJ, the Bush tax cuts that were passed up through 2006 (the 2001 and 2003 cuts as well as other smaller cuts in 2004, 2005 and 2006) ended up costing the Treasury approximately $2.1 trillion in foregone revenue from 2001 to 2010. CTJ claims that if you add interest payments, that number goes up to around $2.5 trillion.” …Not really as I will here discuss…but first…

Ok, there’s a number $2.1 trillion. So where does that put us? $9.38 trillion in debt if, according to CTJ, there was no Bush Tax cut. In my little “eliminate the bad guy blame game” We’ve managed to eliminate 31.7% of the problem based on my estimates. Not bad, but what about the other 70% that’s not being addressed? As you will see from the data below, this idea of lost revenue doesn’t hold its weight. Also under Bush II, social program spending (Medicare, Social Security, Welfare) actually grew, not shrunk, by 45%. But at the same time Federal Revenues reached an all time high. In other words even though Bush II cut taxes, Washington took in more money and, sad to say, government grew. So did spending on all the social programs…pretty much turns everything upside down on what we really thought what took place.

Dumb observations people make when analyzing our current situation:

Let’s go back to Reaganomics! When Reagan got into office in 1981 the national debt was at $907 billion(T$2. in today’s money). When he left office it was more than tripled to $2.6 trillion (T$4.65 in today’s money) .

Bill Clinton had a surplus! If you ever talked with a financial planner, one of the main things they will tell you is that you can never come under budget as long as you have unpaid credit card balance at the end of every month. In the years that there was a surplus we had roughly $7 trillion in debt in today’s money. A surplus is when you owe nothing but have money left over. Unfortunately in the years we had a democratic president and a republican led congress who boasted about a non existent surplus that only existed in newspaper headlines. When you owe trillions to your lenders …there really was no surplus Clinton left office. In more accurate terms we were just merely…under budget.. meaning Washington took in more than it spent and it was by a tiny margin and only by a fraction totaling $558 billion in the 4 years that we were under budget. Nevertheless we were heading in the right direction! Happy days are here again! Then came the war against terror to help us figure out how to stop men armed with box cutters from boarding planes and ramming them into buildings!